Quick not before we start. It’s come to my attention that some people were confused of my addition of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to the Christmas movie list. I’ve updated the first blog explaining why it was put on this list and it be found here.
Let us begin.
This is, I believe, one of Snarfkris’s favorite movies. It’s one of mine too. This is a movie from 1988 and you can sure tell by watching it. It may still feel strongly of the 80’s but the movie holds up. It’s funny, charming, touching, and delivers a great Christmas message all in the span of 1 hour and 41 minutes. Welcome to day 6. If you’ve been playing along at home, the list is as follows
- Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
- Gremlins
- A Christmas Story
- Krampus
- Office Christmas Party
Scrooged is one of the many tellings of A Christmas Carol that we’ve seen throughout the years. This year we even had a movie about the writing of the book starring Dan Stevens called The Man Who Invented Christmas. Each year I switch which version of this classic story I watch. Some years I watch Scrooged, some I watch A Muppet Christmas Carol, and once or twice I’ve watch the animated version or the original from 1951. But I always come back to this one because it’s one of the best.
This movie stars the great Bill Murray but has a fantastic supporting cast of Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark), John Forsythe (Dynasty), John Glover (Smallville), Babcat Goldthwait (The Police Academy series), David Johansen aka Buster Poindexter from the New York Dolls, and Carol Kane (The Princess Bride). There are a metric crap-ton of other actors in this but I just wanted to mention the biggest ones. This was directed by Richard Donner who directed such classics as The Goonies, Superman 1 and 2, and The Lethal Weapon Series.
The great thing about this movie is that while we all know whats going to happen, it still stays interesting. Even if you’ve never seen this particular movie before, you’ve seen some iteration of A Christmas Carol. Even then, this movie can keep your attention because of the multitude of changes while simultaneously staying true to the source material.
Boil this movie down and it’s quite similar to Krampus, someone forgets the meaning of Christmas and some crazy junk happens to make said person open his eyes. It’s a story of personal growth and what’s not to love about that? A realistically evil person, i.e. just a jerk, and a change where his heart grows three sizes (whoops, wrong movie).
This is one of my all time favorite Christmas movies and I hope it’s one of yours too. If it’s not, if you’ve never seen it before, then I hope I’ve convinced you to watch it and thus it becomes one of your new favorites. This movie has everything a Christmas movie needs and it’ll help you either get in to or stay in the holiday spirit. Seven more days of posts, my friends. Stay tuned.